A network of communication stations can share a communication medium (e.g., wires connecting multiple stations or spectrum for transmitting radio signals among stations) using any of a variety of access techniques. Some access techniques (e.g., carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) techniques) include a contention period in which stations contend for use of the medium for transmitting a signal by sensing when the medium is idle. In CSMA techniques, “collisions” sometimes occur when signals from two or more stations overlap. Some CSMA techniques attempt to detect collisions and abort transmission to reduce the negative impact of collisions (e.g., CSMA/CD techniques). Some channel access techniques can also provide a time division multiple access (TDMA) period in which a specific station or stream is provided exclusive control of the medium. Typical TDMA and CSMA channel access techniques are used to share medium between stations of the same type. However, in environments where stations or networks of different types are present, a common means of efficiently detecting the presence of various networks and appropriately segregating traffic between them becomes necessary.